Microarray analysis of salt-responsive genes in common wheat

Dissertação apresentada à Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Coimbra no âmbito do 2º Ciclo de Estudos em Direito, área de especialização em Ciências Jurídico-Políticas, Direito Internacional Público e Europeu

CHAOS DYNAMICAL ANALYSIS OF EEG DATA(Session I : Cross-Disciplinary Physics, The 1st Tohwa University International Meeting on Statistical Physics Theories, Experiments and Computer Simulations)

この論文は国立情報学研究所の電子図書館事業により電子化されました

New femoral remains of Nacholapithecus kerioi: Implications for intraspecific variation and Miocene hominoid evolution

The middle Miocene stem kenyapithecine Nacholapithecus kerioi (16–15 Ma; Nachola, Kenya) is represented by a large number of isolated fossil remains and one of the most complete skeletons in the hominoid fossil record (KNM-BG 35250). Multiple fieldwork seasons performed by Japanese–Kenyan teams during the last part of the 20th century resulted in the discovery of a large sample of Nacholapithecus fossils. Here, we describe the new femoral remains of Nacholapithecus. In well-preserved specimens, we evaluate sex differences and within-species variation using both qualitative and quantitative traits. We use these data to determine whether these specimens are morphologically similar to the species holotype KNM-BG 35250 (which shows some plastic deformation) and to compare Nacholapithecus with other Miocene hominoids and extant anthropoids to evaluate the distinctiveness of its femur. The new fossil evidence reaffirms previously reported descriptions of some distal femoral traits, namely the morphology of the patellar groove. However, results also show that relative femoral head size in Nacholapithecus is smaller, relative neck length is longer, and neck–shaft angle is lower than previously reported for KNM-BG 35250. These traits have a strong functional signal related to the hip joint kinematics, suggesting that the morphology of the proximal femur in Nacholapithecus might be functionally related to quadrupedal-like behaviors instead of more derived antipronograde locomotor modes. Results further demonstrate that other African Miocene apes (with the exception of Turkanapithecus kalakolensis) generally fall within the Nacholapithecus range of variation, whose overall femoral shape resembles that of Ekembo spp. and Equatorius africanus. Our results accord with the previously inferred locomotor repertoire of Nacholapithecus, indicating a combination of generalized arboreal quadrupedalism combined with other antipronograde behaviors (e.g., vertical climbing)

Comparative gene expression analysis of susceptible and resistant near-isogenic lines in common wheat infected by Puccinia triticina

Gene expression after leaf rust infection was compared in near-isogenic wheat lines differing in the Lr10 leaf rust resistance gene. RNA from susceptible and resistant plants was used for cDNA library construction. In total, 55 008 ESTs were sequenced from the two libraries, then combined and assembled into 14 268 unigenes for further analysis. Of these ESTs, 89% encoded proteins similar to (E value of < or =10(-5)) characterized or annotated proteins from the NCBI non-redundant database representing diverse molecular functions, cellular localization and biological processes based on gene ontology classification. Further, the unigenes were classified into susceptible and resistant classes based on the EST members assembled from the respective libraries. Several genes from the resistant sample (14-3-3 protein, wali5 protein, actin-depolymerization factor and ADP-ribosylation factor) and the susceptible sample (brown plant hopper resistance protein, caffeic acid O-methyltransferase, pathogenesis-related protein and senescence-associated protein) were selected and their differential expression in the resistant and susceptible samples collected at different time points after leaf rust infection was confirmed by RT-PCR analysis. The molecular pathogenicity of leaf rust in wheat was studied and the EST data generated made a foundation for future studies

Comprehensive Functional Analyses of Expressed Sequence Tags in Common Wheat (Triticum aestivum)

About 1 million expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences comprising 125.3 Mb nucleotides were accreted from 51 cDNA libraries constructed from a variety of tissues and organs under a range of conditions, including abiotic stresses and pathogen challenges in common wheat (Triticum aestivum). Expressed sequence tags were assembled with stringent parameters after processing with inbuild scripts, resulting in 37 138 contigs and 215 199 singlets. In the assembled sequences, 10.6% presented no matches with existing sequences in public databases. Functional characterization of wheat unigenes by gene ontology annotation, mining transcription factors, full-length cDNA, and miRNA targeting sites were carried out. A bioinformatics strategy was developed to discover single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within our large EST resource and reported the SNPs between and within (homoeologous) cultivars. Digital gene expression was performed to find the tissue-specific gene expression, and correspondence analysis was executed to identify common and specific gene expression by selecting four biotic stress-related libraries. The assembly and associated information cater a framework for future investigation in functional genomics